Living My Passion: Made possible by Unschooling

Hi! My name is Emmanuelle.. I am a 12 year old girl.
I used to go to school and it wasn’t something that I enjoyed. That is because I was forced to do everything that the other kids did. I wasn’t able to learn what I wanted to. I would come home after school and still have to do more work! As I went from grade to grade, the homework became too much, so after Grade 2 my parents decided to homeschool me. But…it was still like school, it was tiring, long and boring!
After a while my mom found out about unschooling and it sounded like a great idea! So thats what we did.

Now that I am unschooling I spend my time on activities such as drama, piano and ice skating. I am passionate about these things and spend alot of time involved with this. I would really like to become an actress and by living unschooling I have more time to live my dreams. The first time I went to drama classes I was a bit shy but since I loved acting and performing, I felt better after a while. I never really thought acting could become real for me while I was at school but now I know I can live doing what I’m passionate about.
Some people say that by doing unschool, you dont learn but in my opinion you actually lean more. The thing is, when you are forced to learn something that society thinks is necessary, it is actually not necessary because when you are told to learn something you don’t like you forget almost right after you’ve learned it!
Like I said, my passion is drama and I feel at home there. There are alot of people that get me there.
I also play the piano. I love everything about music, to dance to it, to play or sing and just to listen to.
My life is alot better now that I am an unschooler. When you are in school people want you to be like everyone else. You can never be yourself. I always had a hard time with this because no matter how hard I tried I could not be myself. But I have learned that you just can’t be anyone else because you are unique and there is nothing wrong with being different. If other people don’t accept you for who you are then it’s there loss. There is one person that will love you as you are and that’s God.

Many people ask me what unschooling is to me and to me it is a learning experience where you can learn anything you are interested in. That’s such a great thing. I can learn what I like!
Another thing I would like to say about school is that they teach children that because they are kids they have to listen to any adult that tells them something even if it is something they don’t like.
People think that they can talk to a child however they like. They think that because we are kids they can push us around and children have to listen. Children have been taught in school that this is right but it’s not! We have the right to stand up for ourselves and what we want. Just because we are children people think that we don’t have our own thoughts, that we don’t have rights. Children accept this because they are told all the time in school that they don’t have a say so then they never speak up for themselves. A lot of people take advantage of children because they are smaller and more helpless.
People have thought wrong when they thought we aren’t smart and don’t know what we want but we do know and we are smart and we deserve better!